Eraser
by Gavrilo-Princip
Summary: You can only take so much before you give up completely.


He'd tried to escape to Australia to avoid it. It didn't work, so after that he tried Stamford. Again, no such like. It was still doggedly following him, constantly breathing down his neck. He would turn a corner and it'd be maybe a half a block behind him, not even winded, tracking him expertly, never relenting. The loneliness and the depression just kept on following him.

He thought more and more in metaphors these days.

After Stamford was closed, he was thrown back to Scranton, back to his old desk, back to Dwight. Back to Michael's incessant bullshit and ignorance, back to the shit and filth and piss of working a dead end nine to five job. Back to Pam, and that's the problem.

He didn't really eat anymore. When the alcohol wasn't enough to make him feel full, when it couldn't dull the hunger pains any longer, he ate something small, but other than that, nothing regular. He worked straight through lunch these days.

They'd kissed. He and Pam had kissed and the next day, she informed him of what a mistake it was. She was holding back, obviously, afraid to leave ten years of Roy and he couldn't _really_ fault her on that, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt like hell. When he first returned to Scranton, he learned the wedding was postponed but had given up on hope a long, _long _time ago.

His number of sales had placed him in the number one spot, which infuriated Dwight to no end, but his appearance had degraded gradually. He was thin and pale, dark circles clinging below his eyes and his face blank most of the time. She still attempted to talk to him, and he responded quietly, subdued, never saying more than he had to. It was entirely too painful to try and ignore what had happened that night.

A month or so after he returned to Scranton, he took some of his savings and bought himself a gun. A nine millimeter pistol with a deadly shine and two 17 round magazines he always kept loaded. He figured since he had stopped sleeping long ago and started walking around the early morning hours, alone with his thoughts, that he might as well have something to protect himself. Mark, before he moved in with his girlfriend, bought him a t-shirt as a joke that read "Rock out with your Glock out". It sat draped over the handgun, both of them tucked together in his sock drawer after each late night walk as he prepared to go into work.

As if a gun could halt the angriest intrusion that crept into the cracks of all the moments when he wasn't at work, wasn't busy.

_You're such a fucking loser. You're so fucking pathetic._

But even after telling himself that, he couldn't stop it. He had lost so much weight that even Dwight and Angela had begun to look at him with expressions tinged with worry. His dress shirts hung off of him like concentration camp uniforms on the shambling, diseased forms of Jews you could see in the footage taken at the liberation of Bergen Belsen.

He felt less than human and more like some sort of sad, pathetic robot, the pain ingrained so deep in his character that it felt as if he was hardwired this way. Condemned to this hollow burning that had blossomed in his chest.

Jim knew he was getting more and more like a teenage girl on a "poor me" kick.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He hung his coat up on the rack and shuffled back to his desk, eyes red and his face unshaven and unwashed. Pam looked up at him and chewed her lip worriedly. They almost never spoke anymore. Jim never made eye contact with her on the rare occasion that words were exchanged because he didn't want to see pity. He saw enough of that bullshit every morning he woke up and looked in the mirror, which was part of the reason he put his fist through it this morning. Pam cleared her throat and called after him.

"Jim…your….your hand is bleeding." Heads turned around the office to look at their walking skeleton of a co-worker. Once they took in his hand and his appearance in general, heads turned right back to their work, to the floor, to the ceiling…anywhere but him. Dwight looked over at Angela and she got up to go get the first aid kit. Jim sat down heavily in his chair and went through the paperwork he had left over from yesterday. Angela approached him and stood nervously in front of him, clutching the kit in front of her chest like a shield. Dwight watched warily.

"Can…um…can I?" Angela asked timidly, eyes flicking down to the droplets of blood starting to collect on his desk. She, like the rest of the office, had watched Jim return a changed man and was there to witness the tail end of his downward spiral. Jim sighed and held out his injured hand, allowing her to clean and bandage it. He looked up briefly and caught Pam's eyes, glossed over with unshed tears. He stared back at her evenly until she looked away. Michael watched the scene from behind the glass window and shook his head, going back to his desk.

When Angela was finished, Jim muttered a "thank you" and turned to look around the office to see who was watching. Everyone was looking at him out of the corners of their eyes and he saw Phyllis sniffle and wipe at her eyes. Kevin, Oscar, Meredith, Toby…everyone looked sad.. Dwight even seemed to be frowning more than usual and Angela sat at her desk with her fingers pressed to her eyes. He turned back to his paperwork only to find Pam kneeling at the edge of his desk.

"Jim…maybe you should go home and get some rest? Maybe see a doctor or a psych-…or someone else?"

"I'm not leaving, Pam" his voice was a whisper and this was the first time in months that he said her name. Pam swallowed thickly.

"I really think you should go home, Jim. _Really._" And Jim dropped his pen and papers to the desk and looked up at her. She cast her eyes downward and Jim got a feeling that he knew what was wrong.

"Why don't you want me here today?" he asked. Her face crumpled a bit and tears leaked from the corners of her eyes as he stared at her. After a few moments, when she regained whatever composure she could, she spoke again.

"I just…have to talk to people…I have…an announcement and you're not….you won't…..like…it," her hands flounced around her trying to grasp the proper words and she sighed, frustrated, and more tears came.

"_I'm so sorry, Jim,"_ she whispered, "_I didn't want you to have to see it._"

Jim stood up wordlessly and looked down at Pam. The entire office once more was transfixed on them. Even Michael's door was cracked open and he was peering through at them. Jim placed his too-thin arms around Pam and drew her close to him. He planted a small kiss on the side of her neck and pulled back, stepped away from her. Jim looked at each of his co-workers before coming back to Pam.

"Goodbye."

And he walked out the door, leaving behind his coat. His cell phone sat forgotten on his desk. Pam's eyes widened and she pressed a hand to her mouth, holding back the sobs that threatened to break out. After a heartbeat, she sprinted for the reception phone and it took her three tries to dial the simple number right.

"Hello? I need help. It's an emergency…"

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jim drove fast towards home. He had a feeling everyone could sense what was going on with him, that they knew what was coming next, so he had to be fast. His car fishtailed around a corner and, tires screeching, he slammed to a stop in front of his house. When he stepped out of the car, he could already hear the sirens in the distance, growing gradually louder and louder. He walked slowly inside and upstairs to his room.

He tore a cover off of one of the novels he read ages ago and penned a brief note for his mother.

He opened the sock drawer and pushed aside the shirt and removed the pistol.

Sitting on his bed, he slid a magazine into the gun and pulled the slide back. Jim released it and it snapped forward, a full metal jacketed slug entering the chamber. He had never fired the gun before, not even at a shooting range, so he took aim at his laptop sitting on his desk collecting dust and squeezed the trigger. The gun bucked slightly in his hand and the bullet missed the laptop and embedded itself into the wall. Outside the crescendo of the sirens grew louder and he tucked the gun into his mouth.

The slick, metallic taste of gun oil flooded his mouth and his nose tingled at the scent of discharged gunpowder. He pulled the gun back out of his mouth and spit, clearing the taste from his tongue. He thought about it for a second, figuring the trajectory out the best he could and pressed the barrel of the gun under his chin.

Outside, the sirens were earsplitting and tires squealed as cars slid to a stop. Someone pounded twice on the door downstairs before giving up and kicking it in. He heard footsteps on the stairs.

He closed his eyes and pulled the trigger, the slug ripping through his head, erasing everything that was him.

Seconds later, a police officer burst into his room to find Jim body slumped back on the bed, pistol lying on the floor. The ceiling above the bed was spackled with blood and grey white fragments of skull and small, fleshy chunks of what used to be his brain. Jim's hand clenched once in a post-mortem spasm and then he was still.

Thin wisps of smoke trailed up from between his lips and out the holes in his neck and the top of his head.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next day, everyone knew.


End file.
